Saturday, June 19, 2004

ROZIE: DAY 5   Exhaustion.  A few hours sleep grabbed, largely by accident, during the past four days.  We wander about the flat, bumping into furniture & doorjambs, barely able to form words, much less coherent sentences.  People ring & babble, ìYou must be so excited..!î    Excited.  By the terror of dropping this tiny red & blue bundle, or breaking one of her twig limbs ?  By constantly checking her breathing?  By tiptoeing away from the Moses basket only to summoned back by a peremptory squeal or scream?  By cradling her husk weight & throbbing heat only to find the supporting hand sliding downwards as slumber attacks without warning?   Rozie is a small bundle of entirely animal needs.  She convulses & wriggles & stretches, trembling like a trapped mouse.  Occasionally the hooded eyelids twitch upwards & thereís a flickering glimpse of unseeing deep blue eyes.  She utters sudden harsh seabird cries of almost shocking volume, her empty mouth stretched wide.  This is not some bijou facsimile in pink & white, a tiny homunculus, malleable & pliant.  There is something almost frightening about the imperative of her need & the insect spasms of the movements it impels.  She is not yet entirely of this world & there must be a time within which she is permitted to be nothing more than a minute piece of organic machinery acclimatising herself to an environment that contains none of the comfort & security of that from which she has so recently been expelled.   And yet beneath the lineaments of that constantly mobile, little-old-lady face there can be seen already something of what will emerge in time.  Each long pianistís finger has its perfectly formed nail & the creases that will always run the same way when the hand flexes.  And one can see in the mouth in rare repose something of how it will configure itself for speech.  But until her senses are attuned to the world of which she is now a part, we have to be honest & not strain to see in her already a shadow of what she will become & patient in waiting for her to join us fully.  And that, of course, is exciting. 11:32:12 PM    Mmm? [] ROSIE TIMES...   Suddenly the quixotic jade that is RU has permitted me access to the Clouds again.  This at 3.09 AM with Rosie wide awake next door & Reuben dreaming noisily & energetically on the hour.  So the post below is now redundant.  Emmaís had four nightís without sleep; Iíve had four with no more that three hours sleep at most.  Maybe, as they say, weíll laugh about this one dayÖ   The first full day.  Emmaís exhausted.  It was a difficult labour & she had no sleep last night ñ Rosie wouldnít sleep in the Moses basket, preferring to feed voraciously & then sleep for a while in Emmaís arms.  The same pattern has prevailed today, although Iíve been able to nurse her too (although a couple of shortcomings on my part mean that I canít share the feeding tooÖ)     Outwardly, Reuben has ignored Rosie completely.  Heís gone about his business much as usual, which at the moment consists mainly of removing items from supposedly secure cupboards & shelves & placing them in the kitchen sink.  But every tine she cries he stops whatever heís doing & listens intently.  Oneís tempted to believe that at this stage on the very edge of developed language, some residual capacity to recognise & interpret the meanings of the whale songs of babyhood remains.    He slept during the afternoon & awoke in great distress, which occasionally happens.  This time, however, he was inconsolable, sobbing in great gulps, even refusing the now shameless inducement of his animal-shaped biscuits.  He only emerged from this cataract of grief when I finally got him buckled into the car seat & took him into town.  Then ñ as with British weather ñ the clouds vanished in seconds & the sun shone brightly.  Itís clear, though, that he senses that the world has changed around him; that the old verities & protocols have shifted out of place & that things will never be quite the same again.  ëOu sont les neiges díantan?í at 20 months!     Once again our domestic circumstances have altered & now Emma & Rosie are together in the main bedroom & Reuben & I are managing a sort of sleepover arrangement on a mattress & a folding bed in his tiny room.  Tonightís the first night so it remains to be seen whether heíll elect to sleep the night through or wake up with seismic energy & great joy in his heart at around 4.00 am. 3:10:26 AM    Mmm? [] test 2 3:01:33 AM    Mmm? [] test 3:00:32 AM    Mmm? []

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